The course builds on top of the material of spm4110 and assumes the material of spm4110 to be known. Students who did not follow SPM4110 can come to the module manager to discuss the possibility to get an update at the beginning of the course.

Summary

The “Service Systems Engineering” course focuses on methods and tools for designing and assessing service concepts and on organisation of service processes. The course does not only pay attention to services in an interorganisational setting, such as logistic services, but also to services within organisations. Examples of such services are teaching and learning services, and coordination and collaboration services. In the course, students are confronted with the characteristics of service design in both public and private organisations in all TPM domains, and with the characteristics of service design and management in distributed, multi-actor settings.

2. Service applications Several examples of service design projects will be covered throughout the course, applying the service systems engineering framework in several domains; this covers both the analysis of existing projects and the design of a new service system.

Study Goals

The objective of the course is to show – after general design methodologies have been covered in spm4110 – how service design differs from general design, and what specific methods and tools can be used for the design of service providing systems. After the course, students have a good theoretical background on services and service design, and they are able to apply the design guidelines for cases that are not too complex.

Education Method

Lectures, discussion groups among students and teachers. Students have to work out a design for a specific service applying the material from this course and the general design course (and apply the content design and process design guidelines). Some of the lectures may be prepared and taught by groups of students.

Literature and Study Materials

Book E.A.M. van de Kar, A. Verbraeck, Designing Mobile Service Systems. Research in Design Series 2, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2007.

Assessment

Design assignment (A) and a written exam (E). Both marks have to be >= 5,5. The final mark will be calculated by averaging A and E.

Remarks

Over the past two decades, the nature of organisational work has changed, and the services industry, which produces non-tangible goods, provides the majority of jobs in The Netherlands. A key characteristic of the services industry is the high information content of its products, showing a potential for the application of ICT. The main keywords that characterise every service definition are: transaction and intangible. The effect of the intangible nature of services on the design and management will be shown throughout the course. Service systems are usually distributed multi-actor systems, because they are location independent (intangible nature) and they have producers and consumers. Services can be found in every domain.